Category: EDUCATION

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post. Late in April, approximately 1,000 students in the Upward Bound Program at The University of Maine Presque Isle (UMPI) received notice that their funds would not be continued, due to the line spacing of their funding application. Programs like Upward Bound work to “level the playing field” […]

On June 16th, I celebrated my youngest daughter Coraline’s second birthday. While she opened presents, I relished the memory of her entering my life. She was born a month after I’d graduated college, during a time when I was totally unsure of how I’d find enough work or how to make it as a freelancer. […]

Photo credits to Pettifoggist. Originally published on The Undefeated. My mother and my father remember chatting with friends at a nondescript table at the 1989 American Library Association (ALA) annual conference. Sitting with them were Walter Dean Myers, Jim Haskins, Virginia Hamilton and her husband Arnold Adoff — all award-winning writers of fiction and nonfiction […]

Photo credits to Flazingo Photos. Originally posted on the Huffington Post. In New York City, where the summer job program for high school students is run on a neighborhood lotto system under which kids vie for a limited number of slots, some kids will win, and some will lose. Maria Bonilla struck out four times […]

Originally published on Quartz. This fall, thousands of college students from across the country will begin their undergraduate careers at colleges around the nation. They will inevitably pack too much to fit in their tiny dorm rooms. They will also carry with them their share of over $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, in […]

Written by Morgan Whithaus. Originally published on The Huffington Post. Open Letter to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson I graduated from Riverside High School on June 8. As my classmates and I walked across the stage at Cameron Indoor Stadium, we graduated with one less student. For Wildin Acosta, June 8 […]

Originally published on Rooflines, a Shelterforce blog. Jenean F. and her husband worked hard to achieve the increasingly elusive American Dream. She was a stay at home mom and he worked as a salesman in the auto industry, affording them a measure of middle class stability in the heart of the Midwest. They rented their […]

Originally published on ESME. Reentering college as a nontraditional student takes a lot of courage, especially as an older woman with kids. I received my bachelor’s degree at 35 and walked across the stage, eight months pregnant, to accept my diploma. My six-year-old daughter sat in the audience watching me. It was not, by any […]

Originally published by The Progressive. With the walk-out that led to the resignation of a university president and chancellor, the University of Missouri’s black football players showed their power to organize against racism, particularly when money is at stake. These young men, with the support of their coach, came to the aid of a graduate […]

Months ago, Sen. Jack Reed, a longstanding champion for students, introduced the Responsible Student Loan Solutions Act, a bill that would have prevented interest rates on all new federal Stafford subsidized loans from doubling on July 1. Like many of the other proposals out there, Sen. Reed’s bill pegs interest rates to the market. So […]